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Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of the passing of the last great American President, Ronald Wilson Reagan. Today marks the 70th annitversary of the D-Day invasion and the 30th Anniversary of President Reagan’s speech at the 40th Commemoration of D-Day, a speech remarkable (in this age of the Cult of Obama) for Reagan’s complete lack of self-reference; a speech not about the president, but about history, philosophy, and the men who actually fought the battle.

It was about 29 years ago that the MFM were hyping what was, in the Reagan Era, a monstrous scandal. At the invitation of the German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl. the president and Mrs. Reagan laid a wreath in a cemetery where German soldiers were buried. In 1985, this was a HUGE scandal.

White House aides have acknowledged that the Bitburg visit is probably the biggest fiasco of Mr. Reagan’s Presidency. The visit, which was made at the insistence of Mr. Kohl, was overwhelmingly opposed by both houses of Congress, Jewish organizations, veterans’ groups and others. [New York Times, 06 May 1985]

Ponder that. Here was a “scandal” in which no one was killed, no one’s rights were violated, no taxpayer dollars were wasted, and the White House never lied about it.

When President Obama sits by and does nothing while Americans are under attack in Banghazi, then goes to a party the next day in Las Vegas, then lies about the whole affair being about a YouTube video — that’s a “phony scandal.”

When the Obama Administration uses the IRS to harass and intimidate opponents of their administration’s policies — that’s a “phony scandal.”

And, most recently, the Obama Administration releases five of the world’s most dangerous terrorists without consulting Congress — that is also dismissed as a phony scandal “whipped up in Washington” because Republicans are racists who can’t stand the idea that a black man is president.

Republicans have been in a funk ever since Obama’s re-election. I’m the first to agree that there’s a deeper problem, but it’s got more to do with under-thirties and what education and the culture are doing to them than with anything a path to citizenship will fix.

When I listen to my non-Republican twentysomething friends talking about the GOP, I hear an image of a party drawn from Democratic talking points and college professors’ prejudices. Few are aware of the ideals of liberty and civil society that have stood as the guideposts for the conservative and libertarian thinkers who have defined the basic philosophy of the Republican Party since Reagan.

Many, as Arthur Brooks sagely observed last month in the Wall Street Journal believe Republicans are indifferent to the poor. Republicans need to change that faulty perception. They have to show the “under-thirties”, as Kurtz described this demographic suffering the most under Obama’s policies, that conservatives are aware of — and sympathetic to — their plight and will, if elected, put into place policies which will make it easier for them to find jobs commensurate with their talents and their training, allowing them to prosper as did young people in the Reagan Era.

FROM THE COMMENTS: Cactus Bill gets it:

There has been a bastardization of the language for some now. When compassion is defined by how much government can provide instead of what you can provide for yourself the notion of pursuing your own happiness is turned on it’s head. Real compassion is allowing an environment where a business of any type can actually HIRE someone. A real job is more compassionate and rewarding to the soul than all the government provided resources have ever been able to give. (more…)

And while Barack Obama did just as well among young voters last month as the Gipper did in 1984, his share of the young vote has declined since his initial election. Young voters grew to appreciate Reagan for his accomplishments; they seem more enchanted with Mr. Obama’s image.

Some seem to think that that the Republican’s current poor showing among young voters suggests the party could lose an “entire generation” to Democrats. But, this notion assumes that voters party identification remains fixed. And that is hardly the case. How will these young voters feel about Mr. Obama and his Democratic policies when the job market for their generation continues as it has these past for years? Come 2016 (even 2014), they could be quite open to a Republican message expressed in terms similar to those offered by Reagan in the 1980s.

That said, the GOP today doesn’t so much have a youth vote problem as it has an ethnic problem. Ben Domenech reminds us that

Mitt Romney won white voters under 30, even winning white women under 30. The youth voter barrier to the Republican Party is really the same barrier as it is for all age demographics: an ethnic barrier which concedes black, Hispanic, and Asian voters to Democrats.

(Read the whole thing even as the piece’s focus is on a different issue than this piece.) If Mitt Romney could have made, as Ronald Reagan did, a pitch to all Americans, he likely would have done much better among young voter of all backgrounds.

I swear the Romney/Ryan campaign is paying attention to what the conservative bloggers are talking about. I remember watching John McCain in 2008 and screaming at the TV something like — “Hey you idiot… why didn’t you bring up [this topic] — it is all the blogs are talking about!”

Now during each debate this year, I scream something like – “Mitt must be reading my Twitter timeline! He knew that [non-covered MSM fact or story].”

Last night I had a number of moments, but one was most important. Many of us in the conservative blogosphere have been contrasting the Obama “Recoversession” to the actual Reagan Recovery. It is a tale of stagnant growth and meager employment versus robust quarterly growth and the fastest job growth in post-WWII America.

Romney laid it out last night and I cheered at my TV. Glenn Reynolds has a great graphic this morning at Instapundit that further illustrates the stark (and I mean damned-ass stark) contrast between Obama and Reagan on economic recovery. If these are the “three decades of problems in our economy” that Obama whines he inherited — please bring more!

Tonight, I’ll be joining a group of our readers in Century City, just a stone’s throw from where Ronald Reagan declared victory in the 1980 presidential election, to celebrate my co-blogger’s birthday.

If you’d like to join us tonight, please e-mail me to RSVP — and for details.

Yesterday, Jennifer Rubin began her must-read post, Is the liberal echo chamber a trap?, quoting one of the Gipper’s favorite sayings, “It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.”

“There is”, she observes,

. . . no better phrase than that to describe President Obama, hermetically sealed in leftist bubble to a greater extent than any Democratic president in history. He doesn’t imagine that there are facts or interpretations that lead his opponents to opposite conclusions. He therefore assumes they are dimwits or liars.

Liberals like Obama believe that a Keynesian “stimulus” must work because that’s what they’ve been taught in college and heard repeated by liberal politicians and policy wonks. No matter that such stimuli, while working well on paper, tend to work as well in the real world. (See, e.g,. our recent guest post.)

And then, there are things which liberals should know about the economy, but don’t — because it doesn’t fit their narrative. The economy rebounded in the 1980s despite the Gipper’s failure to offer a government “stimulus” and continued to grow in the 1990s despite the successful Republican filibuster of Bill Clinton’s “stimulus.”

Obama refuses to confront these facts, repeating instead his nostrum about Mitt Romney wanting to return us to the failed policies of the past. Given that Romney’s economic agenda more closely resembles Ronald Reagan’s than it does George W. Bush’s, it would be correct to say that the Republican nominee wants to return to the successful policies of the past. (more…)

As I recall when I heard Paul Ryan speak at the sacred shrine of freedom Reagan Library, he offered the optimistic son’s concluding comment, expressing his certainty that there just had to be a pony in that pile of horse manure.

Methinks that’s one thing which makes the fetching Wisconsin Republican such a compelling candidate; he knows the Gipper’s tales and shares his optimism.

Yes, optimism does seem to be incurable. And it does seem more Republicans than Democrats share this affliction with the Gipper — and with Mr. Ryan.

GDANSK, Poland — Polish officials unveiled a statue of former President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II on Saturday, honoring two men widely credited in this Eastern European country with helping to topple communism 23 years ago.

People look at a new statue of former President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II that was unveiled in Gdansk, Poland, on Saturday, July 14, 2012. The statue honors the two men whom many Poles credit with helping to topple communism.

The statue was unveiled in Gdansk, the birthplace of Lech Walesa’s Solidarity movement, in the presence of about 120 former Solidarity activists, many of whom were imprisoned in the 1980s for their roles in organizing or taking part in strikes against the communist regime.

The bronze statue, erected in the lush seaside President Ronald Reagan Park, is a slightly larger-than-life rendering of the two late leaders. It was inspired by an Associated Press photograph taken in 1987 on John Paul’s second pontifical visit to the U.S.

Below is the original AP photo and the new statue of these two great leaders for freedom in the last century.

Although Bruce and I have different styles and do put different spins on things, it is often uncanny how certain issues strike us simultaneously. Just as I was beginning a post on the jobs numbers, linking a piece by the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) James Pethokoukis, I find that Bruce had just posted on the numbers linking a piece by that very AEI blogger.

Bruce concludes his post contrasting the robust Reagan recovery with its anemic Obama counterpart. In the Pethothoukis post I caught, the blogger provided the details of that contrast:

Job growth during the three-year Obama recovery has averaged just 75,000 a month for a total of 2.7 million. During the first three years of the Reagan Recovery, job growth averaged 273,000 a month for a total of 9.8 million. If you adjust for the larger U.S. population today, the Reagan Recovery averaged 360,000 jobs a month for a three-year total of 13 million jobs.

Read the whole thing! Via Glenn Reynolds who was one of many conservative and libertarian bloggers who linked the above, referencing that post in one of his two roundups on the job numbers, the other here.

Lots of good stuff in both detailing just how bad this recovery is — and explaining why.

FROM THE COMMENTS: Rattlesnake asks, “How much did Reagan spend for each of those jobs that were created under his watch?” (more…)

And this in 1978 when popular opinion, to borrow an expression, had not yet evolved on the issue.

Not just that. The Gipper was not, as some activists have alleged, indifferent to the AIDS epidemic. To the contrary, he “signed $5.73 billion in U.S.-government anti-AIDS outlays” — or, ” $10.6 billion in today’s dollars.” Deroy calculates that the “average annual increase in federal expenditures on HIV/AIDS under Reagan was 128.92 percent.

And the Gipper may well have been the first U.S. President to openly host an openly gay man — and his partner — in the White House. According to a March 18, 1984 story from the Washington Post: “Ted Graber, who oversaw the redecoration of the White House, spent a night in the Reagans’ private White House quarters with his male lover, Archie Case, when they came to Washington for Nancy Reagan’s 60th birthday party — a fact confirmed for the press by Mrs. Reagan’s press secretary.” (more…)

Bruce and I are both of the Reagan generation; we came of age in the 1980s. Like a majority of those born in the 1960s and early 1970s, our enthusiasm for the nation’s president grew as his days in office lengthened. The Gipper left office well loved by the twentysomethings of his day.

My generation warmed to the Gipper not as much when he was a candidate as when he was president. We loved him more in 1984 than we did in 1980. Once in office, he gave us hope that we would find jobs and have a better future. Obama, by contrast, gave us hope that his administration would be different from that of his predecessor, but once in office, the enthusiasm of his young followers began to wane.

In the four years since President Obama swept into office in large part with the support of a vast army of young people, a new corps of men and women have come of voting age with views shaped largely by the recession. And unlike their counterparts in the millennial generation who showed high levels of enthusiasm for Mr. Obama at this point in 2008, the nation’s first-time voters are less enthusiastic about him, are significantly more likely to identify as conservative and cite a growing lack of faith in government in general, according to interviews, experts and recent polls. (more…)